CHANDIGARH: The school teachers and other employees working on aided posts aided by the Punjab government are going through the toughest phase of their lives. Despite performing all their teaching and non-teaching duties with complete honesty, they have not received their salaries for the last five months.
The union's state president Gurmeet Singh Madnipur, state-level leaders Ashwani Madan and Harvinder Pal said that the situation has become so dire that these teachers, who celebrated the country's Independence Day on August 15 with full enthusiasm and patriotism, do not even have money to bring ration to their homes. The fire in so many houses has gone out and many aided school employees have been forced to sell or mortgage their wives' jewelry to bring ration to their homes. Now, Teachers' Day is to be celebrated across the country on September 5, but the teachers of government-aided schools in Punjab are in a painful situation - on one hand they will be honored as "nation builders" while on the other hand they have been deprived of their salaries for five months despite rendering their services. For the past five months, dedicated to the promotion and dissemination of education, these teachers of government aided schools have been continuously performing every responsibility assigned to them by the government, be it teaching in classrooms or performing election duty, supervising board examinations or organizing seminars or handling many other additional non-teaching tasks. Yet, in return, they have not received their salaries for so long, which is their only source of livelihood.
The situation has reached such a pitiful state that the financial condition of thousands of teachers and other staff of aided schools has deteriorated to the point that they are not even able to meet household expenses. This situation is not only morale-depleting but also extremely unfair as they have no control over the administrative delays that have led to this crisis.
The Punjab Government Aided School Teachers and Other Employees Union strongly appeals to the Punjab Government to take immediate and concrete steps to release the salaries of all employees pending for several months and to create a system where payments and other dues are released regularly and on time. If quality education is to be maintained in aided schools, the dignity and morale of teachers must be protected at all costs.